An interview with Master Yoga Teacher, Karin Stephan
Melissa: “Who is your greatest mentor/teacher?”
Karin: “Well, Mr. Iyengar, of course, because of Iyengar yoga.”
Melissa: “What is your practice style, and how did you choose your method?”
Karin: “I was doing ashtanga yoga for three years – and you see, it’s always a process. It’s never a straight line – I met Iyengar in Bombay, I took his first class, and I LOVED it... then I didn’t do anymore; I continued to do Vinyasa and teach Vinyasa Ashtanga yoga in France. I heard he was coming to London and I went there to study with him, as it turns out he would come to Europe a lot so I would study with him whenever he would come to Europe. He was the greatest teacher I had ever met, and I had only known two teachers in Yoga, Pattabhi Jois, and Jean-Bernard Rishi, the man I first studied with – Mr. Iyengar was a genius, he was brilliant. It was very exciting to study with him. I took several workshops with students that have studied with some offshoots of his work and sometimes I ended up getting redirected into their interpretation of his work. I ended up coming back to Iyengar because he is the purest and he has the greatest understanding of the human body of anyone that I have ever met. All of his principles are very easy for me to understand and work with.
Melissa: “How long was Iyengar your teacher?”
Karin: “He was my teacher from 1972 until around 1987, and then I went back to India where his daughter was teaching. I mean really, he continued to be my teacher until he died at 96. He has continued to be my inspiration and the ideas behind my ideas, so to speak.”
Melissa: “What obstacles has yoga helped you overcome in your life?”
Karin: “Well that’s a long story, it totally changed my way of life. I wasn’t vegetarian; I was eating more animal food and drinking wine — I was living in Paris, so there was wine served with dinner every night— yoga helped me get off the alcohol. I completely stopped drinking, and I also began to eat more plant food. So yoga helped me overcome a direction I was going in that was not a healthy lifestyle. Then the second time around when I was 40, I had a bad relationship, and yoga helped me overcome that… but see it is a double edged sword because it didn’t help me overcome it in the moment, it helped me later on through dedicated practice.
It’s a complicated question, Melissa because there also has to be a change in the mind.”
Melissa: “What is your favorite quote?”
Karin: “I think on a serious side….. ‘The first step is the last step.'
I am quoting all the time, and that is one of my most famous quotes.
There is a wonderful quote by Rumi that I love as well ‘When Angels achieve discipline, they begin to shine.’
Isn’t that beautiful?
Rumi is talking about people having a sadhana, that the practice of yoga starts working all the internal organs, keeping them alive and shiny and it emanates out keeping the skin clean.
And there’s a fun quote by May West, ‘a thrill a day keeps the chill away.’
So that’s about how having fun in life, which is important.”
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